Intimacy

Intimacy

“Love, itself, is a certain kind of death”
-Cornel West

“If you really want to live
You’ve gotta be ready to die,
Every single love is a murder,
You’ve got to commit to survive.”
-The Constellations

It has to happen, at one point or another, in relationships. Whether familial, romantic, platonic, spiritual, workplace there comes a point where the relationship requires (deep breath) less. It is the moment when the relationship grows in its depth, breadth, rhythm, and cost to a space where it is no longer generic, but specific. Words and affirmations, pleasantries and comfort are set aside for intimacy.

Intimacy is the key in creating and inventing the relationship that works best for you. It denotes your character, displays your eccentricities, writes your script, works on your strengths, and mends your scabs. It alleviates the weight of apologies and loosens the knots of anxiety that chop up meaningful conversations like a bad cell phone signal, leaving you with just the –alf o- t-e c–ver–tion.
Then why does it seem like people avoid intimacy? Or, at least, they avoid talking about it or admitting the importance to it? That has something to do with love. Love is rendering the superficial for the substantial in a person, in a place, in a moment. Love knows nothing of niceties, or policy, or succumbing to popularity. Love increases the potential of two people, it sheds light into the darkest, coldest hour, and it does so without regret or remorse.

Love seeks out intimacy to grow. Intimacy begets love. The two are intertwined in a dance none of us can ever explain, but one we always participate in.

We have no way of controlling their symbiosis. We have nothing to do with it – actually – and yet it has everything to do with us. The only relevant way we can participate with the two is to completely surrender, to die, to commit the act of sacrifice and relinquish the parameters of what we want in order to enjoy, with others, what we need.

How do we know this? The Gospel. God craved an intimate relationship with men and women. We, in turn, craved an intimate relationship with God – to better know ourselves, to better understand our purposes, to better know one another and all the things surrounding us. Sin broke the relationship. Christ loved. Christ stepped in and died. Intimacy was restored.

All in all, then, we have the perfect model for intimacy and love and restoration, and even death. Christ died, and He rose. We love, we die, and somehow – we rise again.

-Eunice Alicea